Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Pushing my Buttons

I could go on a lengthy rant, but for the sake of my blood pressure and those around me I won't. I'll go on a short rant. I believe I've posted before some of the issues I have with the Catholic Church lately. Not the people mind you, but the hierarchical Church structure/administration. The last couple of days has really made me shake my head at them.

Our regular assisting priest is on sabbatical to deal with some personal issues so we've had a "substitute" priest. The first one was a very nice retired priest. However, the active priest that baptized Nicholas when he was our associate priest was available so now he is our priest until the regular one returns from sabbatical. He USED to be the pastor of his own church until he was basically fired. I won't go into all the reasons, but it was pure politics. He has a deep love of the poor and was trying to help out an inner city parish that sorely needed it. And he got no support whatsoever. Top that off with a post from a local blogger that Ellen found talking smack about our parish and how we were so fucked up because we have a pastoral administrator and a staff person that believes women should be priests and I was off baby.

Over the years I've come to suspect that our Church in Rome has become a bunch of Pharisees. Jesus spoke well of them when he said the worship with their lips but their hearts are far from the Lord and that they place large burdens on their flock they won't themselves shoulder. Lately it seems the Catholic Church is all about RULES. We have a rule for this, a rule for that, and you can only be a REAL Catholic if you follow all the RULES. Our Church is going to Hell because we haven't been following the RULES.

The Catholic Church is going to hell in a handbasket because we are forgetting about what Jesus asked us to do. Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, help the poor, visit the sick and the prisoner. Instead of doing that, we're re-writing how the Mass should be said. We're arguing about who should be a priest. We're debating points of theology that don't really make a difference. Love the Lord as yourself and love your neighbor as yourself.

I go to Mass every week to worship and give back to God (when I play, that is). It's about spending some time with the Lord. Truthfully, the words and forms we utilize aren't that important. At Mass, the only thing that matters to me is receiving the Body of Christ. I swear, if there was another Christian faith that actually believed in Transubstantiation, I'd be outta here. Anyway, as I've told others, you can't fix something from the outside so I'll keep going and hopefully convince some people that it isn't about the Rules. It's about Jesus, stupid.

3 Comments:

" we are forgetting about what Jesus asked us to do. Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, help the poor, visit the sick and the prisoner. Instead of doing that, we're re-writing how the Mass should be said. We're arguing about who should be a priest. We're debating points of theology that don't really make a difference. Love the Lord as yourself and love your neighbor as yourself."

Right there, you said it all Vince.

I know how close you are to your Faith and dealing with man-made "rules" that don't mean anything important must really be frustrating for you, and I'm sure others.

It's worse than a student sitting in a class for a subject he has a great love of, only to have a teacher that can't teach worth beans and makes the class a living hell. That student will want to go elsewhere to be free to study and explore what he loves.

I know that is a rather lame example, but it is what comes to mind. In the Big Picture, what the Church is doing doesn't make one lick of sense and could destroy itself. It should be doing all it can to bring more to the fold instead of driving worshipers away. :-(